While
driving to the Commons, you might hear radio ads
reminding you that Pyramid Mall, Tops and Wegman's are even
closer, by car. Those places have nice orderly shops and orderly
shoppers, free parking, and it's warm there. You slow down to consider.
Which way do you go?

Amid the Commons shops are
occasional festivals and live
entertainment, political rallies, and easygoing informality. We
run into friends, and meet new ones. There are also empty store
windows and lively teenagers there.

Many of those who own property and sell goods along the
Commons, and those who own the Commons (the public), are nowadays
concerned about your shopping decisions. On the one hand, several
members of the mayor's hand-picked Commons Design Review
Committee prefer to remove the Commons, plowing people aside and
installing a street so that cars can park near stores. These
folks recall Ithaca's downtown 50 years ago, when stores were
full and parking meters sang with nickels. They believe that
restoring 60 parking meters along State Street would recapture
lost retail glory.

Fifty years ago, however, Ithaca's downtown was the only
major
shopping center within 20 miles. Since then, the Ithaca Plaza
became this area's first shopping mall (1949), Atwater's grocery
left downtown (1952), the hospital moved to West Hill (1958),
Seneca/Green traffic was split around State Street (1957), Route
13 was carved up to Lansing (1963) and Jamesway soon pulled city
residents to Triphammer for bargains, Ithaca College left
downtown to South Hill (1963-1967), the K-Mart building entered
the wetlands (1967), the public library moved four blocks farther
away (1968), East Hill Plaza intercepted East Hill residents
(1972), the Commons itself was installed to confront mall
competition (1974), the Farmer's Market was evicted from the
Commons (1976), Pyramid mall lured even more City residents from
downtown (1976), the downtown YMCA burned (1978), Tops opened
(1980), the Department of Social Services was sent to West Hill
(1986), Wegman's arrived and began to overpower many small local
retailers (1987), and it later became the area's dominant retail
food center (1997).

Therefore, these plans to rip out the Commons and
replace it
with street and parking spaces would today merely open another
route to Wegman's. The former Commons would become another dull
section of East State Street, and could become almost as
abandoned as West State Street. There are of course many
pedestrian malls which have failed, yet one needn't travel far
(Geneva, Elmira, Binghamton, Cortland) to see failed Main Streets
either.

Rather than attack the Commons with jackhammers, let's
start
over with the basic question: What do people really want? By
doing a focused survey, we might discover that what people want,
especially in winter (and we have 9 chilly months here), are such
things as warmth, light, plants, color, live music, play areas,
good food, sensuality, novelty, information, comfortable walking,
people-watching, and companionship.

Thus to make our Commons a popular retail center, we
would
make it a popular community center. Designed by the community
(like a Leathers playground), we'd provide what people want,
emphasizing features malls don't offer. So here are
recommendations:

First, for the money required to rip out the Commons and
put a
street there (estimated roughly at $500,000, by City Engineer
Bill Grey), we could dome at least part of the Commons, creating
an arboretum and solarium to the rooftops, within framed glass.
This enclosure, featuring stained glass waterfalls at Commons
entryways, including seasonal themes such as stained glass autumn
leaves and snowflakes (with dramatic solar-electric
spotlighting), would use double-walled heat-retaining polygel, or
translucent aerogel, which could be folded back during warm
weather (see Ithaca Money 7/92), and retain firefighting access.
The hardware.

* Quit complaining about the Commons teens and
organize them
as performance assets. Despite appearances, some are among the
area's most talented young artists, writers, scholars, acrobats
and musicians. * Arrange some of the benches such that people are
encouraged to speak with one another. * Allow dogs on leashes,
and fine the owners who don't clean up.

á* Provide a quiet room for meditation/prayer and
relaxing.

* Establish a primary medical clinic and/or Wellness
Center as
an anchor enterprise, for Ithaca's aging population (as a
candidate for City Council in 1973, this writer proposed this
clinic where Center Ithaca now stands (Journal 7/28/73).

* Bring the State Theatre back to life. Pack
that house
weekly.

By making space for everything fun and functional, we'd
be
making downtown an essential place to be. We'd attract not merely
"shoppers," but humans who shop. What kind of humans
are these?

The present Commons retail vacancies largely reflect
cultural
change. Successful Commons stores have followed Ithaca's
transition away from white Reader's Digest America (and from farm
to urban) toward a cosmopolitan, multiethnic mix of students and
immigrants, boomer escapees from bigger cities with their kids
and grandkids, plus blue collar workers who have long owned homes
here, and feisty old timers who haven't fled to suburbs. Most of
these city folks seem to have in common that they value their
individuality -as people willing to explore new styles-who regard
themselves as creators and citizens rather than just consumers.

Thus, chain stores fail on
the Commons (like McDonald's, Taco
Bell, Izard's, B. Dalton Books, Pizza Hut) not for lack of cars,
but for lack of interest. Dozens of unique homegrown specialty
gift and food stores are already doing well on the Commons. Some,
like Viva Taquer“a and Wild-ware, are expanding. There are
20,000 people within 10 blocks of the Commons who are looking for
something fresh.

There are more who would
visit: there are suburbanites yearning
for genuine human experience rather than bland shopping. And
there are tourists who want to experience urban excitement.
They're also looking for more than shopping. They say, 'show us
how you're special.'

Woolworth's might be
reclaimed as a centerpiece of community
economic development-- the Ithaca Trade Center-- containing, for
example, GreenStar Co-op and an enlarged Alternatives Federal
Credit Union. Both of these enterprises recycle their money
within Ithaca. There is so much room in that building that we
could house as well the Wellness Center and HOUR Town store.
Similarly a re-use and recycling center can recapture millions of
dollars value of new and like-new brand-name goods from departing
students, for re-sale to locals at bargain prices.

So these are the Commons' new foundation-that the
Commons
welcome the spirit of this can-do city to continually reshape
downtown for our broader civic aims, and that it serve as an
incubator for hometown creativity.

Also essential to Commons revival, in any form, are
rents low
enough to promote bootstrap enterprises. This is accomplished by
charging a vacancy tax on storefronts empty six months or more,
to compensate the City for lost sales tax revenues. For example,
shops empty six months might have property tax increased 25%;
full-year vacancies would add 50% tax; eighteen months 75%; two
years 100%. This tax (invoked elsewhere when inflation rates and
local unemployment are within specified ranges) would force rents
lower, to fill shops, and would encourage property sales to
landlords less greedy.

We can moreover add hundreds of residences above shops.
These
would be urbanites eager to live close to culture, stores,
employment, colleges and nature, and who like to walk and use
abundant transit. According to Joan Bokaer of Eco-Village, this
would be part of a larger plan (being developed with Citizen's
Planning Alliance) for making downtown a thriving urban center.
We'd walk her greenway park along Six-Mile Creek, between the
Tompkins County Museum and Cayuga Street.

She regards trollies as essential to this plan. Until
1935,
there was a trolley bringing townfolk downtown along Tioga
Street, and students downtown via Eddy/State Streets. This can be
installed within two years, according to Marc Cramer, financial
consultant for the San Diego trolley (now a rental agent for
Center Ithaca). More than transportation, trollies can put Ithaca
on the map as the San Francisco of the east. Riding them becomes
an essential Ithaca experience, capturing for our town center
every visitor to central New York, every parent who brings kids
to college, and most students looking for something new to do
(see HOUR Town's trolley article 7/92 at
http://www.lightlink.com/crisbill/cpa/trolley.html). Cramer also
suggests that tour buses be encouraged to stop along the Commons.

The roads around the Commons prevent access even while
they
encourage it. Cars surround the Commons like sharks in a moat,
discouraging pedestrian and bicycle entry by the 20,000 people
within ten blocks. These 20,000 seldom drive five or ten blocks
to the Commons, to hunt for parking and pay for it. They're
reluctant to drive or to walk. Therefore safe bike access, along
wide bike lanes (Tioga & Cayuga, West State, etc) can make
the Commons a family destination again.

These plans to make downtown more pedestrian, bike and
transit
friendly, and generally more energy-efficient, would not only
make our urban lives healthier, more convenient, less expensive,
more humane, more fun, less stressful, and lower our taxes (2/3
of the City's budget subsidizes cars). They would be good
business.

We should proceed without depending on City Hall.
Present
department heads and elected officials, though decent people,
seem rooted in a past that doesn't work. The present City Council
thus far appears overall more conservative (top-down business
development, development for sales-tax' sake, pro-highway,
anti-bicycle, convert open space to industrial parks, reduce
social spending) than perhaps any since 1968. And many staff and
officials assume you're too lazy to move anywhere without a car:
'people love their cars,' they often say.

While City Hall continues to assume that cars are the
only
practical conveyance for economic development, larger numbers of
Ithacans understand that bike, transit and pedestrian development
are more practical, since they'd attract here visitors and new
residents who yearn for this kind of urban life. The first
American cities to move boldly in this direction will bring new
wealth, new talent, and receive worldwide attention.

During the December snowfall, when cars were banned,
city
streets quickly filled with sledders, skiers, walkers and even
bicyclists. The only downtown restaurant open (Basics) was
packed. People were glad to reclaim their city, replacing car
dominance with quiet streets & fellowship.

Why is the Commons important? Because it focuses our
community
identity. At its best, our marketplace becomes a real place,
where flesh-and-blood people trade hand-to-hand the goods they've
made, where they learn to trust one another, even becoming
friends and lovers. Such markets are the opposite of the global
economy, where people are disposable. Local economies created by
the general public (such as Ithaca HOURS and the Farmer's Market)
highlight our beauty as individuals.

You're invited to plan our Commons future. The Commons
Online
Committee (COCOM) has been having discussions since this year
began. Everyone is welcome to become a member of the Committee